🐢 Turtle Racers

A fun desktop racing game built with Python's Turtle graphics library. Pick your turtle, watch the race, and see if your racer crosses the finish line first!

---

🎮 How to Play

1. Run the program — a popup will ask you to pick a turtle color
2. Type one of: red, blue, green, orange, or purple
3. Watch the race unfold on screen
4. See if your turtle wins!
5. Click anywhere on the screen to close the window when done

---

🛠️ Technologies Used

• Python 3 — core programming language
• Turtle — Python's built-in graphics library (no install needed)
• Random — built-in module used to randomize each turtle's step size

---

🚀 How to Run

1. Make sure Python 3 is installed:

   python3 --version

2. Run the game:

   python3 turtle_racers.py

No external libraries required — both turtle and random come bundled with Python.

---

🗂️ Project Structure

turtle_racers.py    # Main game file (all logic in one file)
README.md           # Project documentation

---

🧱 Code Overview

Section	What it does
Screen setup	Creates the 700×400 game window with a light blue background
Turtle creation	Spawns 5 colored turtles stacked vertically on the left side
Finish line	Draws a vertical line at x=300 using a hidden turtle
Race loop	Moves each turtle forward a random 1–10 pixels per frame
Win detection	Checks if any turtle crosses x=300 and displays the result

---

✏️ Customization Ideas

• Change the number of racers — add or remove colors from the colors list
• Adjust race speed — tweak random.randint(1, 10) to a different range
• Change the track length — update the 300 finish line x-coordinate and screen.setup width

---

👤 Author

Jay — Student Project
University of New Orleans